November 5th, 2016 | By Lance Hayes

Disney Princess Magical Tiara Adventures Game

Just in time for Christmas, all of your magical princess dreams really can come true! I’m excited to announce my role as composer and sound designer on this inventive and really fun game released by Disney and available in Toys R Us and Target across the US this holiday season.

Of course we have one here and have found that it’s a really fun toy that appeals to both boys and girls. You put the Tiara onto your head and it detects your motion to propel the dancing, adventure and action games. You get to play as many of the famous princesses from the Disney cannon including modern favorites like Tiana, Merida, Rapunzel, Jasmine and Ariel. There are dance party games and it’s beautifully simple to use.

Working closely with Audio Director Korby Sears and the brilliant team at Forrest-Pruzan Creative was an absolute pleasure. A special shout out to the always amazing Deirdre Cross for thinking of me and putting us together.

I can say that the soundtrack was a joy to write and produce while the sound design was a challenge to create that in the end was wonderfully implemented by Korby making the game really come to life with the stellar voice over work. I hope that little princes and princesses enjoy being part of the adventure, I had a great time working on this one!

August 2nd, 2016 | By Lance Hayes

I‘m very proud to be featured in the new book Beep: A Documentary History of Game Sound! A labor of love for Karen Collins and Chris Greening that has spanned half a decade of work and dozens of interviews with the top game audio talent of this and previous generations. Here’s more info from the Beep site:

The Beep Book is transcripts of interviews with over 100 game audio professionals from a range of areas of game sound’s history. The majority of the interviews were conducted as part of the Beep documentary film project by director and author Karen Collins. These are supplemented by interviews done for Video Game Music Online by Chris Greening. The book is ~410,000 words in length–a huge volume of material spanning decades of video game and pinball audio history. Interviews include artists such as Marty O’Donnell (Halo), George “The Fat Man” Sanger (7th Guest), Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy), Yoko Shimomura (Kingdom Hearts), and many, many more. The interviews aim to explore the changing nature of game audio over time. Interviews are with people from all over the world, including Japan, USA, Canada & Europe, and took place from October 2014 to July 2016. They cover a range of expertise and experience levels, and include composers, sound designers, voice actors and directors, record labels, conductor, orchestrators, chip musicians, hardware and software creators, and more.

If you’d like to check out my input, head over to Volume 1 page 215. Truthfully the whole thing is a marvel of deep dives and forward thinking that spans the entire history of games. A worthwhile read for the game audio enthusiast as well as students and anyone interested in hearing from a unique perspective on the development of the video games that have shaped our lives.

January 29th, 2016 | By Lance Hayes

In the studio

Its been a long, cold, wet winter so I wanted to drop a quick update about the latest developments from the studio up here in the dark and stormy Pacific Northwest.

First up; the new album is well under way and I will have updates and some music to listen to very soon. We have a label and a publisher but the cost for developing the album is, in the modern tradition, ours. I’m looking at Patreon to help defray some costs so if you like my work and want to support, keep an eye out for the announcements.

Speaking of announcements, my Lance Hayes (DJDM) Newsletter is live again, you can sign up all over djdm.com or you can go check the link in this Tweet. Stuff is happening and this is great way to not miss any upcoming updates.

I‘ve finally bitten the bullet and signed up for an Instagram account. Not sure why it took so long but I’m excited to share my more esoteric photos with you. Expect some fun updates on there as well as on my Twitter and Facebook pages.

In one last note, I finished my first score for a Disney project at the end of this past year. It was a blast to work on and I’ll have more about that as soon as I can share!